I emerge out the back door of the Barrow on a high ledge. The only way down appears to be base-jumping, but I manage to carefully hop my way down. A path, or stairs would be nice but then I suppose everybody would come this way.
After a quick stop-off at the old Riverwood Trader to return Lucan's claw and sell him a bunch of ancient Nord gear, I then head on over to Whiterun to give Farengar the Dragonstone he so badly wanted. He's very grateful and reasonably impressed (No thanks to you, buddy. Your spells weren't the ones that kept me alive!) but the high spirits quickly plummet when a cranky Dark Elf woman dressed for battle comes running in.
"A dragon is attacking Whiterun!"
Gods, this is going to be bad. Cursing my own sense of heroic duty, I reluctantly follow the wizard and Irileth (the elf woman) to listen as a guard describes what he saw to the Jarl. I'm not really interested in the details, the important part is that there's a Dragon, and I would like to head in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for me the Jarl has other ideas.
He puts on his grateful face and appeals to my inner hero.
"I need your help again. I want you to go with Irileth and help her fight this dragon."
Um... how exactly?
"You survived Helgen, so you have more experience with dragons than anyone else here."
Well he's not wrong, but he's conveniently forgotten that my experience consisted entirely of fleeing as fast as I could. In my professional opinion, we should all do that now. Or I should do that and you stay here to slow it down...
He gives me an axe as thanks for recovering the Dragonstone. Does he think this will help with the Dragon? It's a symbol of my office, apparently, but it's completely useless. I wonder if Lucan would buy it from me? I might give the wrong impression if I sell it here in Whiterun...
In the end there's nothing for it. A sorry band of warriors we are, running towards a Dragon... on purpose...
The watchtower is in ruins, there's corpses littering the ground... actually those will be helpful. There's a cry and the Dragon comes down out of the sky from the south... Here we go...
I remember I have a great scroll I picked up in the Barrow somewhere, which will give everybody a much needed boost against this beast. It's all written down quite clearly, so it doesn't matter that it's far beyond my own comprehension. There's a great explosion of healthy green light and everybody looks grateful for the assistance. Unfortunately that's about all I have to offer. I start looking for a good place to hide...
The fight itself is more or less uneventful. Mostly I try to stay out of the way and every solider that falls gets another chance at being a hero as I resurrect him. Irileth is yelling the entire time, but she's also doing the most damage so I suppose that can be tolerated. My illusion spells are totally ineffective against the dragon so once the corpses run out there's little I can do but hide behind a wall while Irileth burns. Good thing she's a Dark Elf... my delicate complexion would never recover from that degree of assault, no pun intended.
Finally Irileth delivers the killing blow. She's actually done a pretty impressive job. It's a shame none of her soldiers survived to credit her. She probably wouldn't have made it without my morale support, calling out encouragement from behind my little pile of rocks. It's after the dragon is dead that things get really weird, and really awkward.
It turns out I may be something called 'Dragonborn', which everybody seems to know about except for me. All I know is that the Dragon disintegrated and I can yell a strange word really loud. I don't like it, it sounds much too aggressive...
To make it weirder, some voice shouts out from the sky and makes everything rumble... 'Dough-farting', it sounds like. Whatever that is, it sounds unpleasant and I want nothing to do with it.
This place is weird...
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